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Apple offers a more personalized Health app in iOS 13

2019 June 12

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Apple is reworking the Health app to offer a more personalized approach. The company showed off a variety of the changes coming to the app at this year’s WWDC keynote, with plans to launch the redesigned app alongside iOS 13 later this year.

The new Health app in iOS 13 will offer a more personalized approach, utilizing several new data points for the user to keep track of if they so desire. One of the primary focuses with iOS 13 is women’s health, with Apple’s Health app offering a variety of tools to track things like fertile window and cycle tracking.

Let’s dig into the overview.

Trending Activity

Apple’s Activity rings are a nice way to get a snapshot view of how you’re doing on a daily basis, but with the new Health app Apple wants to expand on that vision in a big way. With Activity Trends, Apple wants users to be able to take a look back and see how they are trending over a set period of time. Apple will let Health users compare the last 90 days with the previous 365 days, using key activity metrics to paint a long-term picture.

If the Health app starts to recognize that you’re trending downwards, it will offer up personalized coaching tips to help you get back on track. The new tracked elements include stand hours, stand minutes, flights climbed, distance, exercise minutes, active calories, workout run/walk pace, and finally cardio fitness level, which is measured by VO2 max.

Tracking the Cycle, Stats, Visualization & History

One of the biggest new additions to the Health app (for both iOS 13 and watchOS 6) is the inclusion of cycle tracking. Apple says this is an easy way for individuals to track their menstrual cycle, allowing for specific data points that can offer up a clear picture of personal health.

iOS 13 users will be able to log their period, including flow, symptoms like cramps and headaches, and whether or not spotting was experienced. The Health app will also let users input key elements, including basal body temperature and ovulation test results.

With cycle statistics, users will be able to see their last menstrual period, typical period length, variations to that length, typical cycle length, and any variations to cycle length as well.

The visualization tool will allow users to scroll through a daily log of logged information at a glance. That includes noted symptoms, fertile window, and period information.

And finally, a history of the user’s cycle. With this information, it’s easy to see logged periods, fertile window, symptoms, and length at a glance.

Period & Fertility

Period prediction will make it possible for users to track when they will likely have their next period. Apple says this prediction can cover when the user’s period could start and end each cycle, and will extend to offer the predictions over the next three cycles.

With period notifications, the user can be alerted when the Health app expects your next period to start. There will also be notifications to remind the user to log their period data as well.

In line with predictions, Apple is also including fertile window prediction with the redesigned Health app in iOS 13. This feature will offer up a prediction for when it believes the user will have their next fertile window, both the beginning and end. It will offer predictions over the next three cycles.

There will also be notifications for the fertile window as well, with the Health app suggesting when the next fertile window is predicted to start.

Summary View, Highlights, Interactive Charts

The new Health app is designed to offer a better way to see the visualized information it is designed to share. To that end, there is a brand new Summary view. This will dynamically showcase the information each user is interested in most, which includes recent entries, any alerts the user has received, highlights, and more. It will even show new features to enable when they crop up.

Highlights will use data from apps and devices, which will populate charts and graphs automatically. Those will show comparison graphs and line charts.

And finally, things get interactive. The new Health app will include the ability to view historical data by hour, day, week, month, or year. It will also allow the user to filter using overlays, which include averages, daily averages, alerts, latest information, and range.

Search & Browse, Education, And New Profile Page

Apple is making it easier to find what you’re looking for in the redesigned Health app. Apple says it is improving search for health data in a broad way, while also offering up a new categorization of data types.

In the education section, Apple says it will be offering up more information related to hearing health and menstrual cycles.

A new profile page will offer more information, including a Medical ID, status of organ donation designation, accounts attached to health records, and any connected apps and devices related to Health.

Hearing & Oral Health

Apple is also aiming to offer more information related to not just hearing health, but also oral health. For the former, Apple is including pertinent information for both environmental audio levels, and also headphone audio levels. Environmental audio notifications rely on the Apple Watch, and will send a notification when the environmental audio levels are getting too high. There are two ranges specified by the app (working with the Apple Watch): OK and Loud.

Headphone audio level will also categorize the decibel level in either OK or Loud categories.

The Health app will also let the user track audiograms from hearing tests taken.

There is a new Oral Health data entry that will allow users to track the time spent brushing their teeth.

Apple Continues To Push Health Tracking Forward

Apple sees the health market as one it can do some good in, with its devices and software leading the charge. Tracking these key data points, and adding more on a semi-regular basis, will only give even more information to each user — and information isn’t a bad thing.